Hmm. Hot Topic.

Seems like among other things Gas Prices is one of the daily topics.

Here in Mid-Missouri on the way home the highest price for regular unleaded was $2.91/gal. At least a 20 cent jump since this morning.

Not much humor to be found in the whole hurricane situation, but I did see Shephard Smith on location in New Orleans on Fox News earlier and he was stating, "No water, no food, no medical supplies." It appeared that there might be one other thing to add, "no makeup" and it appeared it was a hat day. I guess it may just be, "no makeup artist".

Not sure why there are so many reporters running around asking these poor people that have lost everything what they are doing and how they are feeling. I know that you have been out here without food and water for some time now, but I am going to stick this microphone in your face. I am just wondering how long before we see someone saying get lost or we see a reporter getting beat up. Most of the reporters don't look to be suffering to bad, other than maybe missing the makeup.

It's here and it's gold! Release 7.

I had noticed that R7 was added to the R6 forum.
Now, how long before we are ready to get there?

FJ - Second Chance

I did get another chance to try.

Paint.Net 2.2 is in Alpha

Paint.Net 2.2 is in Alpha.

They point out that the Alpha build will expire on September 28th, but that an update will be available before that time and that the final release of v2.2 will not expire.

Some of the new features noted on the site:

Here is a list of the important new features and changes:

* German translation (about 80% complete)
* Scaling and rotation of selected pixels (use the Move tool after selecting)
* Ability to modify a selection with union and subtraction (NOTE: performance is currently quite bad)
* Unobtrusive update notification system
* Measurements and rulers available in inches and centimeters, as well as pixels
* Holding down spacebar allows you to pan with any tool
* Shift+mouse wheel now scrolls horizontally
* Brush tools now render a preview that corresponds to the brush size
* TGA file format support
* GIF transparency support
* Many areas have been heavily optimized for performance (scrolling, zooming in, Blur effect, selection rendering)
* New effect: Add Noise
* New adjustment: Sepia
* Brightness & Contrast adjustment now works with luminance, not RGB, scaling. This produces more correct results.
* New Rotate/Zoom user interface that allows for 3D rotation, tilting, and image tiling
* Further optimized for dual-core CPU's (Athlon X2, Pentium D) and multiprocessor systems (Xeon, Opteron)

Gas Prices

Of couse, I don't know all of the ins and outs about the whole industry, so I really can't make well educated comments, but they say on the news (another potentially limiting factor in one's knowledge on a subject) that gas prices are going up simply because we don't have the facilities to refine all of the oil we have. Now they say gas prices are going up because they had to shut down oil rigs do to the hurricane. Now what does it matter that you shut down the oil rigs for a few days if we already have more oil than what can be refined?

Next the oil rigs will probably need a new coat of paint and that will raise gas prices.

It would be nice if there was something that would happen that they simply couldn't make an excuse for raising prices.

Ford Service Part 14

I had a voicemail on phone which I checked while leaving work on Thursday 8/18. It was from Chris at my local Ford dealership. He stated that my stereo was in. As they are only open until 5:30pm and I am off at 5:00pm, but often don't get out of here until 5:30pm, I hadn't gotten a call back into them. I ended up calling on my lunch hour on Tuesday 8/23 and simply asked what it was going to set me back. Chris, the one the left the voicemail, answered the phone said he was not the rep assigned to my incident, that Virgil was and that he would have Virgil give me a call. As I had not heard back from anyone by Thursday 8/18, so I called at 5:15pm as I was leaving the office. The rep that answered, our friendly A.J., whom you might remember from previous posts, said that he would talk to Chris, asked for a number where I could be reached and promised that I would receive a call that evening. I got back from a meeting on Friday and had a voicemail from Chris. It said that he thought that it would be covered by my extended warranty and he wasn't for sure, but he thought that it would be $50, but my incident was assigned to Virgil, so if I had any questions that I could call and ask to speak to him. What a place!

Pontiac Solstice Sighting

I was driving down the Boulevard at lunch today and had my first sighting of an actual Pontiac Solstice. It was all black. It looked nice, but the top was up. It didn't look as though one would have much headroom with the top up, but I guess that is relative to your height. I think they look nicer with the top down.

Open Source Apps

Open Source Apps mentioned in InfoWorld article (must register to view article).

Business Intelligence
Apache Agila
Pentaho

Business Process Management
Apache Agila
JBoss jBPM

Content Management
eZ Publish
Mambo
OpenCMS

CRM
Compiere
Open for Business Project
SugarCRM

Directory Services
Fedora Directory Server
OpenLDAP

ERP
Compiere
Linux-Kontor
TUTOS
webERP

ESB
Iona Celtix
Mule

Identity
JOSSO (Java Open Single Sign-On)
Shibboleth
SourceID
Yale University CAS (Central Authentication Service)

Point of Sale
jPOS
PHP Point of Sale
TinaPOS

Portals
Apache JetSpeed Portals
eXo platform
GridSphere
JBoss Portal
Liferay Portal

RFID
RadioActive Foundation

VOIP
Asterisk
Bayonne
SIP Express Router
sipX
Yate (Yet Another Technology Engine)

Work vs. Prison

I received this from my father today.

Just in case you ever got the two mixed up, this should make things a bit clearer.

IN PRISON... you spend the majority of your time in an 8 X 10 cell.

AT WORK... you spend the majority of your time in a 6 X 8 cubicle.

IN PRISON...you get three free meals a day.

AT WORK...you only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.

IN PRISON...you get time off for good behavior.

AT WORK...you get more work for good behavior.

IN PRISON...the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.

AT WORK...you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

IN PRISON...you can watch TV and play games.

AT WORK...you get fired for watching TV and playing games.

IN PRISON...you get your own toilet.

AT WORK...you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.

IN PRISON...they allow your family and friends to visit.

AT WORK...you can't even speak to your family.

IN PRISON...the taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.

AT WORK...you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

IN PRISON...you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.

AT WORK...you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

IN PRISON...you must deal with mean wardens.

AT WORK...they are called managers

Have a Great Day at WORK!

Google Talk

I received an invite from Bruce today to try Google Talk.
Well as you can see I got it installed. It states in #3:

Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk. Your most frequently-emailed contacts are at the top of your Friends list.

It turns out that was not the case. It did not even add Bruce who had invited me, so I put him in. As it is late I did not bother with trying the call. It showed he was idle, but thought I would shoot an IM to see if I would get a response.




I have not tried Skype, but the talking over the Internet doesn't sound much different. I am not sure if it has ties to e-mail and IM though. I wonder if this has taken a bit of the IM code out of Hello. Of course, MSN Messenger will let one do Audio and Video too, although I don't have a webcam.

My prediction on the Number 1 Word

It was the word of the year for 2004 and I believe "Blog" will hold the title again for 2005.

My wife went to a meeting for the football players moms. She thought it nice, but once the coaches started talking about the plays they had pretty much lost her. I am not a big football fan (other than watching my sons) and would have probably been lost and bored as well. Anyway, my wife mentioned that I had a website for my son's sports teams and then said, well it is really a blog. A lady I work with was at the meeting and everytime I see her at the office now, she says, "Blog blog blog". She alone will put the word over the top.

I work on the 2nd floor and she works on the sixth, but I was up there to meet on a small project we are looking at for the General Counsel and stopped by her office to say hi on the way out. She started, the "Blog blog blog", and we got to talking about web stuff and I kind of ended up giving her a bit of a lesson on blogging. It has relavance for work as well as outside of work. She is on a group (and so am I) that is looking at our Internet and Intranet site. I mentioned there are others, but gave her a demo on how Blogger works. She did not get why one would blog about personal stuff, but thought it was pretty neat and was surprised by all of the things out there. I also showed her IceRocket, and gave her some background on how it searches blogs and displays results on relevance by date. She thought it rather neat when I put in our organizations name and brought up some of the post that people had made about us. Not all of them flattering. I also got into stats for our website a bit and showed her how to get to them. I later passed that info on to all of those on the Web Advisory Group.

The proposal for the GC project went well and I got to teach someone something today, so it was a successful day.

Dodge Nitro

I think Dodge would have a winner if they would follow through with their re-skinned Jeep Liberty called the Dodge Nitro.

CIO's counsel

It looks as though we may have a committee within our organization soon as well.

Missouri is #1

Am I talking football? No. Am I talking basketball? No. Am I talking about any sport at all. No. I am talking about meth. Yes you heard me, #1 in meth. We see it on the news enough, but I am watching a documentary on A&E called Meth: A County in Crisis. It is talking about Methamphetamine in Franklin County. One would think it would be a hard number to come up with as they word it that Missouri is number one in clandestine meth labs, with more than twice the number of any other state. Hmm, if we are able to count them, then I am not so sure they are clandestine anymore. A sad situation to say the least.

Franklin County was named as one of the best places to live in Rural America at #31 in the top 100.



It is not that far from St. Louis. I have been through Franklin County a few times in my life. In the documentary they speak of the anhydrous ammonia being so readily available because of the agriculture in the area. As that is one of the key ingredients used in making meth I would think that Kansas would be a close 2nd behind Missouri, except that the population of that state is only about half of what it is in Missouri. I remember as I lived in a small town in Kansas for four years of my life (8-12 yrs old) that I have never seen as many anhydrous ammonia tanks in all my life as what I saw there. Needless to say farming is big in Kansas.

Description of the show from A&E:

In light of the current media blitz surrounding the national epidemic of Crystal Meth use, we go inside the very personal stories of this crisis. Travel to some small Midwestern towns in Missouri that are ravaged by the crystal meth epidemic. Includes a look at the entire community: from the wide range of addicts and their families, to the dealers, law enforcement officials, hospitals and pharmacies.

Posting

Not the message you want to see when posting a pic via Hello.

Bloggerbot: Sorry, I couldn't save your image due to a disk error.

It went upon a second attempt though.

Top 10 Blog Hosts

In the News Scan section of Information Week, it lists the top 10 blog hosts based on comScore data:

1. blogspot
2. live journal
3. typepad
4. xanga
5. aol journals
6. blogs.com
7. msn spaces
8. blogdrive
9. greatestjournal.com
10. diaryland.com

The information also stated:

Blogspot.com now draws more traffic than NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, or WashingtonPost.com

From the kids around here it appears myspace is coming on strong.

Automobile Club of Southern California has confirmed it fired 27 workers

I guess they know what it is like to feel stranded now.

I don't know all of the specifics on the story, it does sound like some may have crossed the line, but it would also be good to be able to let your opinion be known if it isn't hurting anyone. Does everyone just need to blog anonymously to be able to speak freely?

I am just waiting to see the case where someone somewhat steals or copies your blogger identity. Not hacking your site, but takes a few pics off your real blog, throws them on a blog and sets up a yourname.lastname.blog_host_of_your_choice.com and post nasty messages about people and places as if it were you. Then you get axed or reprimanded and yet you didn't do it. How are you going to defend yourself and how is the employer going to feel when they have egg all over their face and least not what will happen to the real person that is impersonating you, if anything?

They'll probably get off by saying their blog was simply an artistic representation of what they believed said person was probably thinking of a person/employer/company/product.

I guess we'll see. More and more blogging policies seem to be talked about and rolled out, but for all of those that may be throwing out blogging policies, how many are actively policing and enforcing them.

Only time will tell where this all ends up.

Update: It looks like a lot of places are carrying the story another simply being Information Week, which points out some rules to blog by:

RULES TO BLOG BY

Rules covering online activities to add to employee-conduct policies

BE RESPECTFUL Blogs shouldn't attack an employer, supervisor, managers, co-workers, or a company's products or its customers

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION Bloggers must comply with policies that protect trade secrets and confidential information

SECURITIES REGULATIONS Bloggers shouldn't disclose "insider information" governed by securities laws or violate disclosure "blackout" periods"

TRADEMARKS AND LOGOS Personnel policies should spell out if and when company names, logos, and trademarks can be reproduced in online postings and blogs

Windows SharePoint Services Applications

Looking for some apps to run on Windows SharePoint Services. You might follow the link to find what Microsoft has available for download.

Project Portfolio Management

I noticed in the August 15th issue of InfoWorld it mentioned Computer Associates plans to buy Niku.

I just hit Niku's site and noticed that they have an official press release.

Worms

The whole worm thing is just not cool.

Gender Bias on the Web

Interesting study. Not discounting the study, but I have never heard of the University of Glamorgan before, so I can't really comment on their expertise, but many studies have shown a gender bias on things in the world, so it does not surprise me.

The Sound of Music

We went to The Sound of Music at The Muny this past weekend. The kids weren't thrilled about it, but enjoyed it more than they thought they would. As I remember my mom enjoyed the movie when I was a kid. She also had the soundtrack (can you say LP) and listened to it frequently, so it was interesting how familiar the songs were. Not really my cup of tea, but seeing a good production does make a difference and although it was rain delayed, the rain dropped the temperature making for a nice evening.

A bit more reorg

Well Thursday I ended up getting three more people in my group. I am up to 11 now. Needless to say it is keeping me busy. There is still suppose to be more reorg on the IT side over the next six months, so I am not sure if I'll end up with the same group or not. As a part of the reorg, they are suppose to be physically moving the reorged groups closer together, so not sure where I'll be sitting either. Nothing new there, I have moved many times in my 18 years, although the whole time has been on the same floor in the 8 story building.

Google Maps

I like the new hybrid map.

Personalized Google

It has been a while since I looked at Google Personalization. They have added several more items.

Photo Stitching

I saw an application called Autostitch mentioned in an article. I downloaded it and threw in the pictures below, 22 in all, and simply cropped the results and came out with the picture you see below. Of course, you have to have photos with distinguishable areas that it can work with, but you simply open it up select the files and it does all of the work. No fisheye lens required. Pretty neat.

Sun News - Sun Policy on Public Discourse

Looking for a blogging policy. Follow the link to Sun's Policy.

Reorg tips

Plan it.
Communicate it.
Implement it.

Just my thoughts.

Dave moved his site.

No not Letterman; Fletcher.

I am just now catching up Dave. I am glad to see that even though the location and look might have changed a bit, the content is still the same. Keep it up.

Just something that caught my eye, no big deal, but I noticed it went from the more formal David to Dave.

Dave also points to the recent article in STATETECH which talks a bit about IT consolidation in my state (Missouri) as well as his (Utah).



Al Sherwood has also made the jump from radio weblogs to Blogger.

How good are your car's seats?

Does your car seat pass when it comes to whiplash protection? Find out at Thatcham.



About Thatcham (This appears to be the British equivalent of our Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.)

The Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre, or Thatcham as we are widely known was established in 1969 by British Insurers. The Centre is independently operated with a Board of Directors drawn from amongst the 31 insurer members who fund our work.

Thatcham is a not-for-profit organisation. Our main aim is to carry out research targeted at containing or reducing the cost of motor insurance claims, whilst maintaining safety and quality standards.

A bit more:

We are best known by motorists for testing vehicle security systems and for our work in testing seats for whiplash prevention. Less well known is the fact that we provide some 70% of the data that insurers use to define a car’s insurance grouping.

2nd Chance

I guess I had better watch the old e-mail 24 hours a day, so I can go out and enter the second I receive the e-mail.

Toothbrush

I know they have other products, but when looking for info on a toothbrush and you notice the terms of use, it seems a bit overkill.

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Icerocket passes quick test - Mavs post

It appears that Icerocket is passing the test. I made a mavs post a couple of days ago and the next morning I noticed it was showing as the #4 post on Icerocket when searching for Mavs. That evening it was at #9 and this morning it is at #15, with newer mavs postings above it.

Don't tease me Toyota.

Kind of sad. I got an e-mail that was sent Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:09 PM. I just opened it up and go to click on the link to enter for my chance to win...



...and this is what I get.


Come on Toyota, don't be so mean.

I rather win an FJ Cruiser anyway. Are you listening Toyota?

It probably isn't Toyota's fault directly. It appears the add was actually done by Rapp Collins Worldwide.

It looks like Rapp Collins missed getting a Mercedes Benz C-Spot Drive Invitation, the SL 500 Launch Package, and some other items too. ;-)

They list the following companies as some of their select clients:

Alzheimer's Association, Merck, Novartis, LoweÂ’s Home Improvement, Hyatt Hotels, DIRECTV, Mercedes-Benz, Reuters, Sony Computer Entertainment America (Sony PlayStation), Kaiser Permanente, Philips Oral Healthcare, Mead Johnson, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Camping World, New York Knicks and others.

Consultants - Not always so web savvy.

There are some consultants finishing up a program that should be going live soon. They had some information they wanted posted on the Intranet. Upon looking over the information they had a zip file. Well as not everyone has Winzip that didn't sound like the best format to post a file. After looking at the zip file a bit further I thought it wasn't the best file to have posted simply because of it's size as well. It was 20mb. It was suppose to be a file of sample Word templates that will be utilized in the system. I thought there must be a ton of template files for it to be 20mb when zipped. I opened it up and looked to find out there were only 57 templates. Come on, 57 Word templates and it is 20mb zipped. I opened it up to find a graphic that was used on each template, sometimes more than once. The graphic had been sized down within Word to display at .75" x .81". Okay, that could be why it looks a bit oblong. The graphic is actually square, so the proportions they set for display explains why it looks a bit oblong. It also turns out that the graphic if reset to display at it's full size is 9.97" x 9.97". Come on. There was also a couple of signatures within a few of the templates. I had the file pulled from the Intranet right away. I alerted the internal Administrator and the consultant that requested that the information be posted. She pulled the signatures, which she said she did not realize was in any of the sample templates and proceeded to reply to my suggestion to replace the graphic with a smaller one by stating that they could simply break the files into two zip files to make them smaller, but as they were representative of the files in production they did not want to go back through that many templates. Ding Ding Ding, big Red Flag. I spoke with the Administrator of application and he agreed that if they are that huge they need to change them in production too. He sent that note. I haven't heard anymore. He was thankful for the catch and went on to state that it would have probably shown up when they start performance testing soon. The application does have a web front-end, but it appears to be the classic developer that has no idea about the web. Huge clumsy graphics once again and some items making it where it is not Section 508 compliant. One of our web developers pointed out some specific problems that I hope the consultants will address or we may have to have some words.

Icerocket Celebrity Blogs

Looking at many of the celebrity blogs listed on Icerocket, it appears that many of the celebrities have totally given up or at least given up for the summer.

Although Tom Green, Mark Cuban, Rosie O'Donnell, Will Wheaton, and Moby appear to actively post.

Stats

Not that it is a big number compared to other individuals or companies (our main site at work has had just under 22,000,000 hits so far this year), but I would say readership of this blog is up this year from last. Of course, including the current month in the graphs always makes it look like there was a big dropoff at the beginning of the month.

Portfolio Managment - The pursuit lives on

It is kind of funny that I am talking and hearing more about Portfolio Management again when over two years ago when I started blogging I made reference to CIO's May 1, 2003 issue, which had a lot of info regarding Portfolio Management.

Dry

I lived in Kansas for four years of my life (8-12) and have to say that the state of the grass here in Missouri reminds me of the grass in Kansas. Everyone's lawn would end up being dry and yellow and a lot of them around here have been just like that. It has a crunch when you walk through it.

Sprint - Nextel

It looks like Sprint and Nextel received the next approval in the road to their merger.

Hey Mark!

Just following a couple of your post (1, 2) on Blog Maverick and figured I would put the old Icerocket (www.blogscour.com) to the test to see where this falls.

I see that the Mavs (mavs.com) have signed Josh Powell. Sorry I have never heard of Josh Powell, but then again, I am afraid that I don't keep up with sports that much, other than trying to keep up with my kids. I must admit that I actually enjoy watching a College game more than an NBA game. It seems to me players in the NBA get away with to much (traveling, fouls, carrying the ball, etc..) than one should. Unfortunately, if anything, I think this trend is trickling down more and more. It seems to be like Pro Wrestling, simply an entertainment business.

I do think the Icerocket/blogscour product looks to be pretty cool as it does appear to zero in on current blog info.

I am not sure which is more inclusive in the number of blogs being searched, but you might like one of the features of Mark Fletcher's (or should I say Ask Jeeves) Bloglines that allows you to search blogs and then subscribe to that search, so you get new info it finds. In other words you could setup searches for each of the items you mention, Mavs, HDNet, Icerocket, as well as Magnolia Pictures, Ong Bak, Pulse, Guerrilla, League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, etc. I like the Bloglines reader as it keeps all of my info up to date on the web without having to load a client, such that it knows what I have read, etc.. no matter where I read from, home, the library, a cybercafe, etc.

IBM Redbooks | Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook: Deployment and Migration Guide

Kind of funny. I just had an e-mail from someone asking about Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook. We are not using it, but I noticed this newly published Redbook.

From the Redbook it states:

DAMO is part of the 6.5.1 or later platform and can be downloaded from the Lotus Passport Advantage(r) Web site. It is also important to note that DAMO ships as a standard feature of Domino Release 6.5.4.

dotproject - Open Source Software :: Open Source Project and Task Management Software

As is the case with any project management software, there is a lot of interaction required with the software to keep your project tracking up to date, but if you have the discipline to do it the dotProject.net looks like an inexpensive solution to project portfolio management.

Info from site:

Originally commenced in 2000 by dotmarketing.org, dotProject was developed as a state of the art Project Management tool from the start.

The original theme (still available in the first release of 2005) flagged dotProject as an open source alternative to Microsoft products and other expensive, commercial applications.

Right from the start, dotProject had, as it's core aims a number of simple requirements:

* Clean, simple and consistent user interface;

* Project Management functionality - not another CMS, groupware environment or all things to all people collaboration tool, but a project management environment;

* Open source / open access / free usage.

And right up until the current day, these aims remain the core aim of the current administration team.

Gearing up for a new season.

10,000 photos

Just like the old oldometer on a car, my picture counter on my camera rolled past the 9,999 and back to zero. More than 10,000 photos in the past 18 months. Wow.